Here is my ISIS strategy in a nutshell.

[customerserviceguy]

44. I suppose that technically, you're right

Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, to me a distinction without a difference. All I know is that nearly 50,000 Americans lost their life to fight for only a peace treaty that in the end, wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

As for the "life is cheap", all I'm going by is the behavior of the political and military leaders who commit their nations to wars. Western nations used to be as bad as any tin pot despot that you could find in the Third World. "Be fruitful and multiply" or its equivalent, was important for a society that had turned to agriculture as a method of survival, and once civilization developed 'leaders' who needed soldiers, they kept the old Bronze Age traditions going, as it fed their needs.

We got tired of seeing the body bags coming home on the evening news, our enemies' leaders didn't feel that way, and were thus able to perservere. We who have a limited form of representative government can eventually defund a war, and thus withdraw, but the people who I acknowledge suffer real loss in a war don't have that ability.